Wednesday Comics Experiment Runs Its Course

This past week, the twelfth and final issue of Wednesday Comics arrived in comic shops. Having now read the entire set, I'd say that it was a pretty good package, though perhaps overpriced at nearly $50 for the run. As was always the case with the newspaper's Sunday Funnies that it was based on, some features were more appealing than others, and a few simply held no interest for me at all. I appreciated the fact that several of them utilized cameo guest appearances from across the DCU (Batman showing up in Superman, Dr Mid-Nite in Supergirl and several JLAers in Hawkman come to mind).

Here's my final assessment of the individual strips, listed from best to worst:

• Batman - while it finished kind of weakly, I looked forward to the murder mystery/noir feel of this one most of all
• Green Lantern - I liked how evocative of the U.S. Space Race in the 60s this strip was
• Hawkman - It was a bit of an odd story, but at least it provided an opportunity for Hawkman to go up against a T-Rex!
  
• Sgt Rock - It took a long time to get going, but maybe that's just the way war comics run (having not read many of them before); beautiful Joe Kubert pictures carried the day anyway
  
• Kamandi - I liked everything about this except the placement of the dialogue in the caption boxes... which, honestly, took a whole lot away from the experience for me!
• Superman - The story was quite a letdown but the gorgeous artwork more than made up for it
• Deadman - We got a nice, solid Boston Brand tale here, with just the right blend of mysticism and heroics
  
• Adam Strange - There were enough surprises here to place it fairly high on the list, despite some rather ugly Paul Pope drawings that didn't really fit the subject matter in my opinion
  
• Flash - Frustratingly inconsistent and sporting a terrible cop-out ending, I still couldn't help but love some of the wild flights of fancy such as the ever-increasing number of Flashes running around
• Metamorpho - I had such high hopes for Gaiman's contribution to this series, but it seemed to get too bogged down in retro-Silver Age silliness to ever go much of anywhere; I guess even Neil is only human!
  
• Supergirl - This feature was the inverse of Batman, as it started off fairly uninteresting but then finished with a nice flair
  
• Metal Men - I've never been a big MM fan, and nothing here changed that opinion; however, I drooled over the Garciz-Lopez art every week
• The Demon and Catwoman - I stuck with this to the bitter end, but I'd have to say it was mostly a waste other than some half-decent pictures
  
• Wonder Woman - pretty much unreadable, so I stopped trying after issue # 2
• Teen Titans - ditto

I thought it a bit odd that so many of the strips involved aliens and alien invasions, but I imagine that was simply a coincidence rather than an overall game plan for it. It'll be interesting to see what kind of package DC decides to reprint all of this in, and how that sells (the newspaper format didn't seem to light up the sales charts as far as I can tell). I'd say the experiment was successful, but if they try to repeat it I'll probably expect a more consistently high standard for my money.